A small fire was started in a boy’s bathroom in Jones Wheat Elementary School on Dothan highway Thursday.

A second grader stopped by the restroom on his way to class and proceeded to set a toilet paper roll on fire with a cigarette lighter.

“This is the first time we’ve had this,” Jones Wheat principal Dr. Larry Clark said. “The thing is, I don’t know what made him decide to do that, with as much as we talk about bringing things to school without permission from the administration and teachers.”

Fire trucks initially responded to the new Jones Wheat elementary school on Shotwell Street.

In the meantime, Clark and janitor Clyde Baulkman used a fire extinguisher to exterminate the flames.

“It was out when (the fire department) got here,” Clark said. “Only thing they had to do was get the smoke out of the hallways.”

The fire department spent an additional few hours in the bathroom cleaning the mess.

The second grader who started the fire was picked up by his mother and suspended for the foreseeable future.

Clark said after going through practice fire alarms, he was impressed with how well the school handled the incident.

“We practice these procedures on a regular basis,” Clark said. “Everyone did a good job responding.”